Maruti Suzuki Offering ‘Raksha Pack’ On its Cars to Promote Safety

To celebrate the spirit of Rakshabandhan festival, Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) is offering a “Gift your family a raksha pack” safety kit to buyers across all its dealerships these days. With the Raksha gift pack, the carmaker aims to manifest its concern towards the safety of customers. This new initiative will also help the company encash the Rakhi festival that usually doesn’t bring in sales like other festivals.

Aiming to spread road safety awareness, Maruti Suzuki has uploaded a series of TVCs on its YouTube channel as well. The series includes short ads making people aware of safety rules such as wearing seat belts, follow lane driving, stop drunk driving, no testing or calling while driving, etc. This will certainly improve its brand image that came in question when its vehicles failed to score in global NCAP.

As a reminder, the Indo-Japanese carmaker has been offering optional airbags and anti-lock braking system (ABS) on its entry-level vehicles at an additional cost of Rs 6,000 to Rs 20,000 for over one year. However, this optional pack was opted by only 37% of its customers. While 5% buyers of the Alto opted for airbags, 34% of the Baleno and Vitara Brezza chose safety features (ABS with EBD, driver and co-driver airbags). Interestingly, the latter two already get most of these equipment as standard.

CV Raman, executive director of engineering at Maruti, said the possible reason behind the lack of interest for the safety pack in the entry segment is that the car is primarily only a source of mobility for the consumer. “Since the perceivable value of airbag is quite low, the penetration of the airbag option is also low in this segment. However, in higher segments, customers typically opt for highest trims that have built-in safety features. With increase in awareness levels, penetration in entry segments is expected to increase in future,” Raman said.